about our contributors
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Meghan Borato
editor, artXposium 2.0: an artINcorporators project in West Chicago, 2008
Meghan Borato is Registrar for the Society for Photographic Education and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied art history at John Carroll University and has previously worked as Assistant Director for Orleans Street Gallery. Meghan volunteers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and may or may not be found chasing stray animals through morning traffic or scissor-kicking anyone who dares to throw away recyclable plastic. |
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Gretl Claggett
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Gretl Claggett grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi. The river has been an ongoing source of inspiration in her life and writing. Gretl holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. Her career includes work in acting and media production, and her travels have brought her to Cairo, the white villages of Andalucia, Paris, Dublin, and Cape Breton. Her poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, BigCityLit, The Greensboro Review, Heliotrope, Lumina, New Millennium Writings, Mangrove, and Rattapallax. Gretl recently completed her first nonfiction book, Do This, Get That: A Corporate Memoir. One of its sections is entitled “Wind and Water.” Her contribution to Submerged is the poem “The Net,” an intense account of a death on the flooded Mississippi. |
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Sumayya Coleman
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Sumayya Coleman grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and has lived in several states and in Europe. She is a compassionate and effective advocate for women, with a specific focus on women of color. She has addressed the issue of violence against women and children for 19 years at the local, state, and national levels, worked in various capacities with community-based organizations, universities, coalitions, faith-based organizations, and numerous projects, and served as guest speaker for many groups and events. As sole proprietor of Share Time Wisely Consulting Services, she coaches women across the country to develop community-based programs, trains on domestic violence issues, facilitates organization and program development, and coordinates events planning. She is currently working with the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence to rebuild the 26-year-old organization. Sumayya is an ordained minister and holds a BA in Business Administration and Management with honors and membership with Sigma Beta Delta. She has a loving husband, two adult children and two grandchildren. Sumayya’s contribution to Submerged is a story called “Hair Peace” about her experience with the mixed messages bound up in a woman’s hair. |
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Matthew Dal Santo
co-author, Airline to Heaven, Part I, 2008
Matthew Dal Santo earned his MA in writing from DePaul University, Chicago, and his BA in art and design from Columbia College Chicago. As of late, he is interested in dreams—the shapes they take and the sensibilities that they tend to defy. He lives in Santa Monica with his girlfriend and their two cats. His poetry, along with chapters from his in-progress children's novel, can be found at www.bergamatt.blogspot.com. A sample of Matthew's work with Spry Magazine can be found here.
Matthew wrote the first portion of Airline to Heaven, Part I, a series of seven short prose works based on dreams. |
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Dianne D. Feula
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Dianne D. Feula has taught English for thirty years and has worked with Dodge poetry groups for over a dozen. She received her MA in English at Montclair State University and her BA in English and education at Upsala College. Dianne lives in Dover, New Jersey, where she makes watercolors, pottery, and works as a carpenter with Habitat for Humanity. She volunteers at an elementary school with third graders, with the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey of which her husband is vice-president, and is a member of the New Jersey Coalition for Peace. Dianne enjoys poetry as a way to express humor, to reflect upon the world, and to hold the myriad beauties of life up to the light. She has two children and two grandchildren about whom she also writes poems. Dianne has contributed a poem, "To My Stylist," to the Submerged anthology. |
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Stella Fiore
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Stella Fiore is a writer based in Brooklyn. She has contributed to DailyCandy, iVillage, Fodor’s New York City 2006, and The Magazine of La Cucina Italiana. Her novel-in-progress won her a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship finalist nomination. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a BS in communication with a minor in Italian studies from Boston University. Her story for Submerged, “Wash the Children,” is her fiction debut, a story about a young girl who discovers that her feisty grandmother is balding. |
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Anne L. Francis
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Anne L. Francis grew up in Springfield, Illinois and has been writing for many years. Her published works include contributions to Parentography, Drama in the Desert, and a book of her own poems called Flow. Anne’s education includes doctoral and teacher certification studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana; an MA in French, and a BA in French with a concentration in creative writing, both from Illinois State University, Normal. More of Anne’s writings and other information about her projects can be found on her website at writing.fluidbody.com. Her contribution to Submerged is a poem entitled ”The Nap,” a quietly moving snapshot of a moment in a mother’s life. She lives with her husband and daughter in San Francisco, California. |
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Kelly A. Gola
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Born in Voorhees, New Jersey, Kelly A. Gola worked as a hairstylist in the fashion industry for several years, taking note of the storytelling that takes place in a stylist’s chair. She returned to school in 2005 to complete her BA in narrative psychology at the City University of New York. Kelly’s approach to narrative studies is best captured in her own words: “The position an individual takes in his or her life story as either a narrator or author has deep implications in the way he/she understands herself and her personal sense of agency.” Kelly’s story in Submerged, “Freelance Fashion and other Fairy Tales,” is a hilarious account of a hairstylist on assignment with a frustrating, high-maintenance photo stylist. Kelly lives in Brooklyn, and is currently applying to doctoral programs in narrative psychology and narrative research. |
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Lauren González
editor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Lauren González is a writer, editor, and co-creator of the anthology Submerged: Tales from the Basin. Lauren grew up in Illinois and has since lived in California and New York. She received her MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College in 2006, and was a Hispanic Scholarship Foundation/McNamara Family Creative Arts Project fellow that year. Thanks to this foundation’s generosity, she completed a book of profiles called Animal People. Her narrative profile of workers on New York’s Old Fulton Fish Market was published in The Reading Room literary magazine in June 2006. She has finished her first novel, The Junkyard, and is currently working on her second, They Met During a War. Lauren’s career includes a long list of editorial, writing, and TV projects on the west coast, including work as the host of GameSpot TV. Lauren is a member of the SoHo Writer’s Room. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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Leslie González
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Leslie González lives in southern Illinois and is employed as an auditor. When she is not working, which is rare, she crafts beaded jewelry and sells her pieces to friends, family, and local shops. Leslie’s contribution to Submerged, “Flyaways,” is the story of a young woman who challenges beauty myths and learns to love her “wild black curly hair” in an environment where blond, straight hair was the norm. |
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Mary Ann González
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Mary Ann González writes poetry and short fiction and has taught English at the high school level. She recently retired after seventeen years with Bank of America. She has been married for the past thirty-nine years and has two daughters. In “You May Call Me ‘Red,’” Mary Ann writes about learning to fade into the background when she was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, and making the decision to stand out with bright red hair later in life. She is an excellent copyeditor, and made Submerged possible with her red pen. |
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Lauren Guida
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Lauren Guida is an entertainment technology major at the New York City College of Technology. She was the music editor for Royal Flush Magazine, Book 4, and spent the Summer of 2007 touring the United States with Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and ten other bands on the Projekt Revolution tour. Lauren can be found running around backstage at some of New York City’s biggest concerts, and lately her written work has revolved around the show the audience doesn’t get to see. In her contribution to Submerged, “Dyeing Young,” a young girl discovers through her hair color rebellion that she may have more in common with her mother than she once thought. |
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Ellen Hagan
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. She received her MFA in fiction from New School University and her BFA in theatre from the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Her work can be found in the pages of Failbetter, Monologues for Women by Women, Check the Rhyme, America! What’s My Name?, Underwired Magazine and upcoming in Just Like a Girl and Woman, Period. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and an excerpt from her novel BLUSH was chosen as a winner for the 2007 Next Great Writers Competition at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Her recent teaching projects include courses at Adelphi University, the Dreamyard Arts Organization/Bronx Writes, Community~Word Project, and the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts. Ellen’s contribution to Submerged includes three poems: “young thangs,” “times,” and “The Bazaz Curse.” She is a founding member of the Conjure Woman Writing Collective. Find her recent projects online at www.ellenhagan.com, www.girlstory.org, and www.becomingwoman.com. |
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Shayla Hason
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Shayla Hason is a photographer and musician living in Portland, Oregon. She received a BA in cultural and interdisciplinary studies from Antioch College in Ohio, and in 2006 was awarded a Caldera Arts Residency in Oregon. Her photography has appeared in numerous magazines such as Oprah, WWD, ANP Quarterly, Arthur, and Sound Collector. Shayla’s frequent travels and investigations are documented in Adventures in High Contrast Living, a photozine she has been producing since 1999. An unrepentant bookworm, she was delighted to be included in the Vice Photo Book, Bedroom Rockers, and Young Sleek and Full of Hell: 10 Years of Alleged Gallery. Shayla’s contribution to Submerged is a poem called “Loss” about a woman encountering herself in the mirror. Her photos can be viewed online at www.dokuchan.com.
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Anne Hays
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Anne Hays lives in Brooklyn and works in publishing in Manhattan. She is the editor of Storyscape Journal (www.storyscapejournal.com), and is hard at work on two book-length projects, often simultaneously. Her contribution to Submerged is “Fitting Stereotypes,” an essay in which Anne follows her subjects’ shifting hairstyles through time in order to unravel the connections between gender identity, physical appearance, social labels, and community ties. |
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Annie Heckman
co-author/artist, Airline to Heaven, Part I, 2008
Annie Heckman is an artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Her work explores mortality and afterlife ideologies through diverse media, incorporating sculptural animation installations and works on paper. Her exhibitions include work at New York Studio Gallery; the Hammes Gallery at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana; the South Bend Regional Museum of Art; the International Print Center New York; and the F.U.E.L. Collection in Philadelphia. Her writing practice has included experimental poetry as well as art writing and editing for exhibition catalogs, and she founded StepSister Press in late 2007 to promote discourse on emerging international art, literature, and critical theory projects. (photo credit Karin E. Lekan) |
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Anni Holm
editor, artXposium 2.0: an artINcorporators project in West Chicago, 2008
Anni Holm is a conceptual artist, with a soft spot for projects revolving around photography, installation, performance, and collaborative art. Born in Randers, Denmark, Anni holds a Studenter Eksamen in math from Randers Statsskole, Denmark. Before immigrating to the United States, she also attended Krabbesholm Art College in Skive and worked as a counselor at Amtscenteret Oustuplund in Kjellerup, both in Denmark. Thereafter she landed an Au Pair job, which brought her to Chicago, Illinois. She graduated with a BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago 2004, where she managed to receive the Albert P. Weisman Memorial Scholarship twice. In 2005, she received an artist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, was a Featured Artist during the Chicago Artists Month in 2006, and was named a Break Out Artist in Newcity Chicago magazine in 2007. Anni has performed and exhibited her work at various locations nationally including Ohio University Gallery, Ohio; Waterloo Center for the Arts, Iowa; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, New York; Space 301, Alabama; along with the Glass Curtain Gallery, the National Museum of Mexican Arts, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, all in Chicago. Since 2006 Anni has also toured the country with the ever-expanding NetWorking knitting project. International exhibitions include the group exhibitions at Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark, Hafnarborg Institute of Culture and Fine Art, Iceland, Amos Andersons Konstmuseum, Finland, Ljungbergmuseet, Sweden and Norsk Folkemuseum, Norway. Anni co-founded Art Walks Chicago, an annual public performance art series on the streets of Chicago, with former performance partner Nyok-Mei Wong in 2004. She is the founder and curator of the three-day multimedia art exhibition artXposium and (soon to be) not-for-profit artINcorporators umbrella arts organization, both based in West Chicago, Illinois, where she also resides. Her day jobs include a position as Gallery Director and Curator at the Orleans Street Gallery in St. Charles, Illinois and a position as freelance Curatorial Assistant at the Bank of America LaSalle Photography Collection in Chicago. |
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Rebecca O. Johnson
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Rebecca O. Johnson is a writer and social change activist. She was born in Akron, Ohio and currently lives in Dorchester, Massachusetts, where she is completing Love’s Bright Fire, a work chronicling the lives of African American men born in the early 20th century. She is a writer transitioning from a lifetime of community organizing, with her MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College, as well as an MS in community economic development and a BS in human services, both from Southern New Hampshire University. Her writings appear online on her blog Urban Ecology (urbanecology.blogspot.com) and at her website, rebeccaojohnson.net, and her publications include work in Callaloo and the Women’s Review of Books. Rebeccca’s contribution to Submerged, “A Brief History of My Nappy Head,” reflects on a lifetime of hairstyle mandates and choices she faced as an African American woman. |
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Lorien Jordan
artist and art director, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Lorien Jordan is a visual artist whose work stems from isolating transient moments in time to reveal the beauty and sadness found in the impermanence of life. Lorien grew up in South Carolina and pursued her BA in painting at Arizona State University. She completed her MA in studio art with a concentration in printmaking at New York University in 2005. In 2007, she completed a one-year residency at the Amsterdam Grafisch Atelier in the Netherlands. Her many exhibitions include work at Young Blood Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia; Gitana Rosa Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, MPG Contemporary in Boston, Massachusetts; and the International Print Center New York. Lorien lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Find work from her projects Negotiable Affection and Strangely Shaped Novels online at www.mypaperanchor.com. |
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Jean Kahler
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Jean Kahler was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and a BA in theatre with a minor in women’s studies from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Jean’s career experience includes work at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and with the Columbia University School of Social Work, and she teaches writing at Purchase College, State University of New York. Her publications include “So You Want To Be A Drag King” in Lumina, and a book on the ruins of Staten Island, with photographs by Jessica Rowe, forthcoming from Furnace Press. Jean wrote two pieces for Submerged: “Learning to Speak New Orleans,” an essay about the experience of visiting New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, and “One Braid,” an essay on hair as a reminder of mortality. |
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Cynthia Blair Kane
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Cynthia Blair Kane is a freelance writer and developmental editor living in Madrid, Spain. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her BA from Bard College. She has recently finished her first novel, Class President, and is working on her second. She has completed a nonfiction book, an oral history of her grandmother’s life through poetry, prose, and recipes, which focuses on Judaism in the Midwest. She is a contributing blogger to Jerusalem Post and was worked with The Reading Room and Lumina magazine. Her publications include work in InMadrid, MAP Magazine, The New Standard, and The Independent. Cynthia’s contribution to Submerged is “Curly,” a short story about a thirteen-year-old girl’s sudden transformative experiences at summer camp. Check out some of Cynthia’s work online at cynthiakane.com and cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/Blair. |
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Hope Kavoosi
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Hope Kavoosi is an Emmy Award winning television and multimedia producer with over fifteen years experience. Her television productions have aired on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS television stations. Her publications include many articles for INsider magazine. Currently Hope is the Executive Producer of MeraMedia. Hope currently resides in San Francisco, California with her husband and two children. Her contribution to Submerged is a poem called “Dread,” a work about the intersection of hairstyles and cultural identity. |
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Shannon Kelley
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Shannon Kelley is a freelance writer and photographer, and a weekly columnist at the Santa Barbara Independent. She was born in San Jose, California, and holds a BA in religious studies and anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with studies in photojournalism at the Brooks Institute. She is currently working on her first book, and her writing has appeared in several publications, including The Arizona Republic, Bay Area Parent, Woman’s Day, and Vanity Fair. Shannon’s experience of driving to New Orleans to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity inspired her essay for Submerged, “Something Worth Saving: On the Road with Habitat for Humanity, New Orleans.” In this essay she describes how she benefited from the particular brand of therapy that comes with intense physical labor and power tools. |
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Dafna Kory
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Dafna Kory is a photographer, filmmaker, and video editor. She was born in Haifa, Israel, and has traveled and worked throughout the world, including projects in India, Thailand, and Tibet. She received her BA in globalization and development from the University of California at Berkeley. Her films include Bored Games (2006), Miradoor (2007), and Destination: Tourism (2007). Dafna has published her writing in The Ear, and she is on the board of directors of Watchword Press, where she helps to produce the annual Whole Story Art Exhibition and Performance Event. Her work experience includes time spent with the Slamdance Film Festival and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and and Radium (www.radium.com). Dafna drew on her experience traveling to Thailand for the setting of her fictional short story “Take Off” in the Submerged anthology. She lives and works in San Francisco, California. |
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Karin E. Lekan
artist, Bitchin' Bodies: young women talk about body dissatisfaction, 2008
Karin E. Lekan is the visual artist responsible for the strangely empowered young women who appear throughout Bitchin' Bodies. She grew up outside of Chicago and received her BFA in illustration from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2002. Karin's images have appeared in several issues of Venus magazine, and she has exhibited with the Chicago Art Brigade, Sweet N’ Slow at the Elbo Room, and Monkey Business in Chicago, at the Yacko Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri, and at the Moreau Art Galleries at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Karin created her first animation "We got a brand new ocean. We got a friend inside." in 2007 as part of the exhibit Moving through medium at the Moreau Art Galleries. She lives and works in San Francisco, California. (photo credit Kit Rosenberg) |
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Emily Macel
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Emily Macel lives in Brooklyn, New York after growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is an associate editor at Dance Magazine. Emily received an MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in English from Allegheny College. Her published works include book reviews in Long Island City Ins & Outs Magazine and January Magazine, as well as features in Dance Magazine. A former dancer and athlete, she now writes fiction, memoir, and history essays on anything from modern dance to high heels. Her contribution to Submerged, an essay entitled “The Big Bangs Theory,” is a short, humorous memoir on her life with bangs. |
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Jessica Palmer
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Jessica Palmer currently resides in the Emeryville, California. She grew up on the East coast and received her BS in communications from Emerson College in Boston. Jessica works as a Marketing Associate for Art.com and has previously held positions with the American Land Conservancy and Outlaw Consulting. She divides her remaining time between wine, cooking, animal-watching, and of course, writing. Find her writings, a blend of observation, sentiment, and experiment, at luckylettuce.blogspot.com and the soon-to-arrive luckylettuce.com. As part of the Submerged anthology, Jessica wrote “Hair Ties,” an essay in which she explores her Russian ancestry through traditions associated with hair, her shifting geography as a young woman leaving home, and the changes these forces create in family relationships. |
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Lissette Peña
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Lissette Peña is a writer and poet from Puerto Rico who lives in Queens, New York. She is working on completing school as well as her first novel about the hardships and rewards of family and growing up in the 1980s in the Bronx. When not studying or writing, she works hard to be a great mom to her three beautiful children. Her first poem, “The Shallows of Water,” was published in the NYU Gallatin School’s journal, The Literacy Review (Vol. 5) in 2007. Lissette’s contribution to Submerged is a short story called “Mi Pelo, Orgullo y el Diablo (My Hair, Pride and the Devil),” a dramatic piece on hair’s potential to spark pride and inspire vivid memories. (photo credit NYU Gallatin) |
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Irene Pérez
editor, artXposium 2.0: an artINcorporators project in West Chicago, 2008
Irene Pérez is a visual artist making work that explores place, perception, cultural identity, and language. She was born in Terrassa, Spain, near Barcelona, and currently lives in North Aurora, near Chicago, Illinois. Irene works on projects in many media, including works on paper, fiber pieces, and installations. Irene’s studies include work in art history at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, photography and fine arts at the College of Dupage in Illinois, and studio arts with a focus in sculpture and painting at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to her practice as an artist, Irene has worked on a number of curatorial projects, serving as the Assistant Director at the Orleans Street Gallery in St. Charles, Illinois since 2007, co-curating RE:FUSE with Anni Holm there. She worked as the assistant organizer on artXposium 2007, and as the curator of the Library Art Exhibition Series at the College of Dupage Library. She recently co-founded the Second Bedroom Project Space in Chicago. Her recent solo exhibition Homeland of Many Nations was on view at Art on Armitage in Chicago. |
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Sara V. Pic
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Sara V. Pic was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her BA from Smith College in Northampton, Massachustts, and her JD from the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. Sara was working as a public interest attorney in Boston in 2006 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and decided to move back to her home town in March 2007 to contribute to the rebuilding of the city. She has been working as an attorney for Mental Health Advocacy Service in New Orleans since April 2008, and was an Equal Justice Works Katrina AmeriCorps Attorney through The Pro Bono Project in 2007. In addition to Sara’s advocacy work, she is a staff writer with Antigravity, a New Orleans music and culture magazine. Her contribution to Submerged is an essay entitled “’If Gender is Performance, Then We Do Improv:’ Drag Kings Rebuild New Orleans.” In this work, Sara explores the experiences of drag kings, whose performances provide New Orleans with a forum for social and political commentary on topics such as gender, sexuality, race, and domestic violence, while also giving the community a safe space in which to have fun and connect with one another. |
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Carla Porch
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Carla Porch was born in Millville, New Jersey. She received her MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and her BA in philosophy and psychology from Rutgers University. Carla’s work and educational experience include projects in photography, film, and graphic design, and she has been working as a writer for eight years. In Carla’s contribution to Submerged, “A Haircut in the Kitchen,” a preadolescent girl foretells her adult life in Greenwich Village during the cutting of her single childhood braid. This rite-of-passage memoir explores life in the South Jersey Pinelands against the backdrop of a loving family dynamic, intensified by the length of the girl’s hair. Carla is currently researching a book on landscapes, and the relationship between humans and their topographies. Carla lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Bonnie Richardson
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Bonnie Richardson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and is a lifelong Midwesterner now living in Chicago. Bonnie wrote “Ethnic Hair Extra,” a story about a black teen girl getting her first professional haircut at a white salon, for Submerged. The title refers to the practice of charging extra for working on black women’s hair in white salons, and the story captures an overlapping of concerns regarding style, money, and culture in a salon. This is Bonnie’s first published piece, with many to come in the future. (photo credit Leslie Nash) |
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Alyssa Robbins
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Alyssa Robbins is an HIV/AIDS educator for The NiteStar Program, a not-for-profit health education theatre company on New York’s Upper West Side. She was born in Washington, DC and graduated from New School University with a BA in nonfiction writing. Alyssa was the recipient of the award for Best Nonfiction Writer of 2003 from Eugene Lang College. She has released two CDs independently, with a third on the way. Her contribution to Submerged is “The Hair Down There,” a piece about pubic hair and how our views of sexuality change with age. Listen to her music online at myspace.com/alyssaclarerobbins. |
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Terri L. Russ
author, Bitchin' Bodies: young women talk about body dissatisfaction, 2008
co-author, AIrline to Heaven, Part I, 2008
Terri L. Russ is intimately familiar with the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction from years of personal experience and professional study. Terri earned a PhD at Purdue University in Communication Studies, as well as a JD from DePaul University. A former practicing attorney, she has worked with a number of community organizations involving issues pertaining to girls and women. She is an Assistant Professor in the department of Communication Studies, Dance, and Theatre at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she continues to explore expectations for female beauty in her teaching and scholarship. Learn about Terri's upcoming writing process (and more) on her blog at bitchinbodies.blogspot.com. |
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Skye Van Saun
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Skye Van Saun grew up in Chatham, New Jersey and is a poet, writer, photographer and musician. She returned to school in 2001 to complete her BA in psychology at Drew University followed by her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College that she received in 2006. She is an advocate for victims of domestic violence and has worked in the Superior Court of NJ, Domestic Violence Unit, taught poetry to inmates at Valhalla Prison, and served as guest speaker and featured reader for many groups and events including the Women’s History Conference “Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives,” under the category: “Unspeakable Violence” at Sarah Lawrence College and at the Gun Violence Awareness Conference, Harvard University. She recently finished a chapbook, Versus Verses, and her first memoir, Moving Violations, both about her own experience with domestic violence. Her work has also appeared in Lumina, Insanity’s Horse and Art Not Guns. Skye has been invited to be a Dodge Poetry Festival poet to read her work at what has become the largest poetry gathering in the world (also known as Wordstock) in late September, 2008. She also recently completed a photo montage of spring in Frenchtown, NJ where she lives by the Delaware River with her dogs, cats, guitars and a canoe. “Hide Nor Hair,” her poem about a young girl hiding behind her hair to avoid confrontation, appears in Submerged. |
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Bren Simmers
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Bren Simmers lives in Vancouver, where she completed her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Her work has been published in journals across Canada, including Grain, The Fiddlehead, Event, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Antigonish Review, CV2, and Room. Her work was included in Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts by Arsenal Pulp Press, and she won Arc Magazine’s 2006 Poem of the Year Award. Bren contributed to Submerged a collection of five poems about various treatments women undergo in attempt to “beautify,” and the empty feelings many of these processes leave in their wake. |
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Miriam Weisfeld
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Miriam Weisfeld is the Dramaturg at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. She has worked through Harvard University, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. She holds an MFA in dramaturgy from the American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theatre School Institute at Harvard University. Freelance credits include work in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Toronto. Her play Medusa/Medea premiered at NovaStage, Canada in 2007. Miriam wrote “The Jewish Girl Dreams of Hitchcock Hair,” a poem inspired by the inimitable Tippi Hedren, for Submerged. Find more information about her projects online at www.woollymammoth.net. |
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Anne K. Wenzel
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Anne K. Wenzel was born in Fairhope, Alabama and raised in nearby Mobile. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College, an MA in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, and a BA in literature from Georgetown University. Her published work includes an essay, “The Placenta, the Pancake: Metaphor in Medicine” in the anthology Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies. Anne contributed a poem called “The Patron Saints of Hairdressers” to Submerged. Behind it is a long-held fascination with the lives of the Catholic saints, which started to develop for Anne when she was 16 and saw St. Anthony’s tongue in a reliquary in Padua: “I was impressed that such a thing (now an amorphous black lump) would be venerated, and—long story short—I became interested in saints’ stories, how they came to be invoked at certain points in people’s lives, and why.” Anne is a staff member of Sarah Lawrence College’s graduate writing program and a faculty member for the summer writing seminars there. She is a freelance violist who has played in the Pensacola and Gulf Coast symphonies. |
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Kara Westerman
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Kara Westerman lives and writes in East Hampton, New York. She holds an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and a BFA in theatre and photography from New York University. Kara’s career includes years as an actress, set painter, real estate agent, and writer. Her first short story, “The Doctor,” appeared in the New Ohio Review in 2007. She is currently working on two projects, a book of short fiction and a full-length book about the amazing house she lives in and cares for. Kara’s short story “Architecture” follows a young widow as she experiences grief, pleasure, and the complications of cultural stereotypes, all during her visits to a stripmall salon. |
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Allison Yates
contributor, Submerged: Tales from the Basin, 2008
Allison Yates is a native of the Bay Area and currently lives in San Francisco, California. She received a BA from Santa Clara University and has published a poem in the book Drama in the Desert. Allison has made extensive travels, including visits to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma/Myanmar, Ecuador, France, Ireland, and Mexico. Allison’s contribution to Submerged, a poem called “I Dream Again,” is best described in her own words: “They say that after a breakup a man grows a beard and a woman cuts off her hair. This is a poem about positive change symbolized by the cutting off of many years hair growth and the years that go with it.” (photo credit Brent Thomas) |
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